The sixth report on the coverage of the campaign prior to the presidential elections by the mass media, compiled by the Association of Independent Press (API) and the Independent Journalism Center (CJI), reveals a 40% reduction in the TV materials of an electoral character between October 29 and November 5. API executive director Petru Macovei, in a news conference at IPN, said at this stage of election campaign coverage, the media outlets showed themselves in their true colors after having a balanced message before the first round of voting.
CJI head Nadine Gogu said Igor Dodon was favored by the context of his appearances at the 12 monitored TV channels. He appeared 116 times in a positive light and 80 times in a negative light. Maia Sandu was rather disadvantaged and was presented in a negative light in 146 materials, and in a positive light in 103 materials.
The number of electoral materials at the private TV channels with national coverage Prime TV, Canal 2, Canal 3 and Publika TV decreased evidently, owing including to the withdrawal of candidate Marian Lupu from the race for the presidency. The materials about the election runners who remained in the race presented Maia Sandu mainly in a negative light, while Igor Dodon primarily in a neutral and positive context.
The situation on NTV Moldova and Accent TV was much the same. Jurnal TV favored massively Maia Sandu and disfavored Igor Dodon. Moldova 1 and TV7 had a relatively balanced behavior.
Petru Macovei said the 12 monitored websites published a record number of news articles compared with the previous monitoring period, including on the day of the first round of presidential elections. The websites posted in all 958 simples or detailed news items, which is 95.9% of the relevant materials, and 32 comments, editorials and other opinion articles, which is 3.2%. The portal agora.md became a leader among portals by the number of articles of a political or electoral character, 168 in number, and outstripped jurnal.md, which published 166 articles in the monitored period. The statements made by election runners and the election process were the main themes on the monitored portals.
Petru Macovei noted that on the 12 monitored portals, Igor Dodon was presented in a negative context three times more often. Maia Sandu was presented both in a positive context and in a negative one, with the cases of editorial favoring prevailing.
He added that the four monitored newspapers in the period published together 40 articles that referred to the presidential elections directly or indirectly. This is two times less than in the previous monitored period. The paper Panorama wasn’t issued in the week after the first round of voting. The weekly Timpul and daily KP v Moldove published most of the relevant materials, being followed by the weekly Saptamana. The opinions continued to prevail over the news and the space allotted for comments, editorials and other opinions was three times larger than for news articles. The highest disproportion between the volume of opinions and of news articles was witnessed at KP v Moldove, as earlier.
The CJI/API monitoring is carried out within a project financed by the National Endowment for Democracy of the U.S. and the Council of Europe.
